


Dust Off Your Highest Hopes

by x_starsmaycollide



Category: Leverage
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-23
Updated: 2013-07-23
Packaged: 2017-12-21 04:27:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/895813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/x_starsmaycollide/pseuds/x_starsmaycollide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set about two years post-season 5. Things change quickly for Parker and Hardison when Parker finds out she's pregnant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dust Off Your Highest Hopes

A plus sign. It had all started with a plus sign.

Actually, it had started with about five plus signs. Parker wasn’t quite sure what she’d expected after the first pee stick had confirmed that she was, indeed, pregnant. She still hadn’t even believed it, really. It hadn’t sunk in until she’d heard the words come out of a doctor’s mouth.

As a general rule, Parker avoided doctor’s offices. Hospitals were easy enough to sneak around under a fake identity, but smaller family doctors? Not so much. They liked documentation. They liked knowing exactly who their client was and their family history and their personal history. It was quite intrusive and unnerving, and Parker had never been fond of the idea of having a doctor. It had been Hardison who had practically dragged her into this specific office the previous year after a particularly draining bacterial infection that had kept her coughing and hacking and wheezing like she was on Death’s doorstep for two weeks before he’d finally convinced her to see a doctor. It had been lucky for him that she’d wound up being fond of Dr. Jenkins, a nice older man who didn’t like to pry too much.

Leaving the doctor’s office had been a bit of a blur. Parker was on autopilot, weaving carefully around others on the street with not a glance spared her way. She’d always been good at making herself a ghost when she wanted to be. No one noticed, either, when she sat down at a park bench beside a playground just a few blocks from the apartment where she and Hardison had been living the past year. Moving in together, like most aspects of their relationship, had never really been planned—it just happened. And it worked for them.

It was a mild summer day, so she was not the only one at the park. There was one little boy there with his mother, who was pushing him on the swing, screeching with delight as the swing went higher and higher. A hard knot settled in the bottom of Parker’s stomach. She wasn’t worried about Hardison at all. He’d dropped hints here and there about babies—even Parker couldn’t miss them. But Hardison had always been good about not pushing, and she was grateful for that. She’d never been one for sentimentality, but Alec Hardison was the best human being she’d ever known, and he was going to be the best father any kid could have ever asked for. It was thinking of herself as a mother that sent her mind reeling.

That had always been her setback whenever she thought about having a baby. She’d never grown up with any good or even decent role models or parental figures. She didn’t know anything about what a good parent meant or what a good parent did. 

What if she screwed it up? Babies were fresh and new and soft and unburdened—and people ruined them sometimes. What if she ruined a perfectly good, innocent tiny human?

After nearly an hour of half idly playing with her phone and half watching a couple more families that had come to the park (her people skills had improved enough over the course of several years with the team to know it was impolite and downright creepy to just stare at children playing in the park), Parker roused herself to get some groceries before returning home. There was a 7/11 just down the road and, as she stopped to replenish Hardison’s stock of orange soda, Parker realized she did need to tell him somehow that she was pregnant.

She’d never been one for big announcements. They were just too much. Honestly, the most appealing option was to just start piling parenting books into the apartment and just see if he would get the hint, but even Parker knew that wasn’t a good way to do anything. So she settled on a different idea, grabbed a couple other snacks for the apartment, and purchased two slurpees before heading down the road to the apartment complex.

Parker unlocked the door and slipped in silently other than the light rustle of plastic bags, setting both the slurpees and the bags down and plucking a grocery list post-it from the fridge and discarding it. Post-it notes were just as much of a necessity in their household as Hardison’s orange soda or Parker’s cereal. They were used for anything and everything: grocery lists, bill reminders, apologies when one of them (mostly Hardison) did something to make the other (mostly Parker) stop speaking, encouraging messages if Hardison was having problems with one of his games, and good morning notes if one of them had to leave early. Parker placed the two liter of orange soda in the fridge before sneaking out of the kitchen and toward the door of the bedroom. Hardison was fast asleep, as she’d hoped. It was three in the afternoon, but he was slowly recovering from a cold that had kept him cooped up in the apartment for a couple days. It was good timing, as Eliot was out of town doing a favor for a friend, so they’d had no jobs lined up.

After returning to the kitchen, Parker set about to do her real work, grabbing a pad of blue post-its from the counter. She wrote ‘I’m pregnant’ in her typical, sloppy scrawl on the top one, pressing it on a bag of mini pretzels she’d gotten at the 7/11. She paused momentarily, picking up the pen once again and putting a second note that declared ‘Get it? Mini-pretzels’ beneath the first note. Parker replaced the post-it notes and pen and put both slurpees she’d purchased in the freezer before padding quietly into the bedroom and sitting as gently as she could on her side of the bed to slip off her shoes. 

Hardison stirred slightly, eyes drifting open at the feeling of movement. “Hey, baby girl,” his voice was still nasally, one of the remaining symptoms of his cold. “How was shopping?” That was the excuse she’d given for her doctor’s appointment. She hated lying to Hardison more than anything, but she hadn't wanted to even suggest her suspicions to him until she was sure. 

“It was fine. I picked up some orange soda for when you feel better,” Parker slipped into her typical spot, Hardison’s arms wrapping around her almost immediately. 

He smiled groggily, “My lady treats me right.” For the past two years, since Nate and Sophie had left to jet set around and do their own thing, life had been comfortable. They still took on cases, they still put their lives on the line for the good guys, and they still had the microbrewery. They beat the bad guys and at night retired to their own place. In a lot of ways, it didn’t seem like much had changed, but Parker knew that now there was no way things could possibly stay the same.

But that thought vanished quickly as she snuggled into her boyfriend, who was drifting back into a Nyquil-induced sleep. She herself was feeling a bit drowsy too. Cuddling with Hardison tended to make her feel that way—comfortable, peaceful, and at home. “Mhmmm,” she responded, her own eyes fluttering closed. And here, teetering on the edge of sleep and awake, in the arms of her favorite human being (who would wake her up in approximately an hour with a strangled cry of shock and delight coming from the kitchen), Parker couldn’t help but feel that maybe, just maybe, everything would turn out fine.


End file.
